Qantas still serve complimentary meals at main meal times, and snacks at other times depending on your flight destination and departure time. I flew Qantas in early January to Sydney in economy class and experienced this lunch service, you can also read my dinner experience in 2019 here.
At the other spectrum, Jetstar doesn’t provide any free food or drinks in economy class, and I was able to experience their domestic inflight menu on the below flight.
QANTAS
Qantas sometimes operate A330’s on flights between Melbourne and Sydney, so I booked a lunchtime flight that was operated by an A330. The airline serves lunch between 12pm and 130pm daily.
For lunch a quiche was served from an established Melbourne brand, it was served hot and I was offered a choice of beverages. The quiche was adequate for this short 1-hour hop to Sydney and the friendliness of the Qantas crew made this an enjoyable flight.
After a few days in Sydney, it was time to head to the Whitsundays. For this sector I chose Jetstar, they’re low-cost but it’s not an unpleasant experience. What caught my eye was this article in their inflight magazine that explained the airline partnered with PETA to create some vegan inflight meals.
For lunch, I selected a few items from the buy on board menu and shared it with my travelling companion. Jetstar has teamed up with Dad’s pies and Sumo salad to offer some interesting products. The pies were quite good, and the Sumo salad was quite tasty. The prices seemed quite reasonable when compared to the similar onboard meal programs operated by airlines in Europe.
My only wish is to be able to pre-order a hot meal for Jetstar domestic flights. I think it would be possible for the airline to do this since they already sell them on international services.
